Won't let them break me down to dust
I know that there's a place for us
For we are glorious
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
Gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I'm meant to be, this is me
Look out 'cause here I come
And I'm marching on to the beat I drum
I'm not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me
This Is Me-Keala Settle, from The Greatest Showman soundtrack
A lot has happened since my last blog post. New Year's Day was mostly spent hanging around my friend Sarah's house in London, before I caught a bus to the train station and headed home. My train left London at 7:40 p.m., and got into Manchester at almost 10 p.m., and the buses had stopped running at...sometime before my train got in, so I walked the two miles home. But it was good, nothing terrible happened. I arrived home to an empty house, as I knew I would, because my Nuns were at a retreat/conference in Darby, and they weren't due to arrive back until January 10th. So...I was totally alone until January 10th, and one day I went to the doctor and found out that I am iron deficient...which I suppose can happen when my Nuns are vegetarians and I don't eat nearly as much meat in my diet as I used to, but I am taking iron supplements now, so that's been good, I am also trying to incorporate more meat into my diet. On Friday, January 5th, I had an unpleasant encounter with a racist old man, he was hanging around outside my gate, and he said some things to me that really shook me up. He was arrested a few days later, he was turned in by the people at the Mosque next door. While being alone in the house for all those days, I realized that I can never live totally alone, at least not in a house that big. The house makes weird noses. The ghosts are pretty lowkey though. They just do their own thing. Still haven't figured out what the ones in the church are wailing about, but they are okay as long as I play them good music. The prefer music from before 2000. They really don't like Justin Bieber. But I did miss my Nuns, and I was so glad when they got home. I think they missed me too. Last week I was on a retreat in Wales, in a village, or town, or something, called Powys, at a retreat center called Cefn Lea. It was windy, and it rained a bit, and it snowed and it hailed, but it was really nice. We were there with the 11 of us YAGM/TFG Volunteers, and the rest of the TFG Volunteers, and the TFG Staff, so there were probably close to about 90 of us there, and it was really nice, but also exhausting. I spent most of the week knitting, and about 40 people over the course of five days told me that I was cool, which was kind of unsettling because I'm used to only my friend Allison thinking that I'm cool :) Also, there were a few other Americans there that I met, they are in the UK through the Time for God program directly, and my new friend Mary also likes knitting and the Gilmore Girls, so we bonded over that, and then I met a Time for God volunteer, named Tim who was actually a YAGM in Mexico last year, but he applied for Time for God and is now here in the UK, and he is actually older than me, which is kind of exciting, because I am the oldest in the YAGM U.K. group, but I didn't think there were any in the Time for God program who were older than me...but I was wrong, and that is wonderful. Also at the conference, I learned that different cultures think differently about sexual orientation, and mental health issues such as depression, and even race. There were some things that I heard both directly and second hand that were not very nice, that related to sexual orientation, depression, and race, and it took me a couple days to regain my calm, but it is what it is. It just makes me sad when people judge other people based on things they can't control. We all bleed the same color. There was an entertaining moment on Thursday, though, when I was listening to a man talking, and I was sitting in the front row, and he was trying to make a point about back in Biblical times when the people who sat closest to the host at the dinner table were considered the most important guests, so he said that since I was sitting closest to him, I was the most important, to which I protested a bit, because I am me and usually try to avoid the spotlight, but I was not the most important for long, because this guy that I met, Artem, who is wonderful, apparently couldn't handle me being the most important, so he climbed over a few rows of chairs and sat next to me, so then he became the most important, so I am forever grateful to him for that :) Also, at the conference, I discovered my new theme song for my life. It's called "This Is Me" by Keala Settle, from The Greatest Showman soundtrack. I also got a lot of hugs at the conference, which is something that has been lacking in my life, so that was really really good. So...yeah. That is the last few weeks in a nutshell, I hope you enjoyed my thoughts, and if you didn't, pretend like you did :)
Most of the YAGMs on top of a mountain in Wales :)
Most of the YAGMs, the TFG Volunteers, and the TFG Staff members on top of the same mountain in Wales.
We had an unofficial theme song for the week, "This Is Me" by Keala Settle, and this is us dancing to it :) 
